Tantibus
by Aservis Roturier
Summary: Ciel Phantomhive has the world's worst nightmares. Still, the one he's living may well be the worst of them all. M for graphic gore. Cover image by the author.


_This is dedicated to Tumblr's DishonestKnight in place of the story I told him about, then lost. May you find joy in its __perversity__ as I take joy in yours._

Tantibus*

They fell apart, their breaths rasping and wild, then lay silent, waiting for their bodies to cool down.

When they had stopped panting like overheated hounds in some fruitless chase, the man reached out and gathered his little partner's near-weightless body, turned it and snugged it tightly against his own like a pair of spoons nested in a drawer. After a while, he pressed kisses into the damp hair below his chin and asked:

"Regrets?"

The little one petted the sinewy forearms caging him.

"No. It's just as you said: we're already damned, we two. What harm could you do to me, or I to you? Best snatch any joy we can salvage from this nightmare while we can."

"Nightmare...here's hoping they'll have left you for now. At any rate I will be here to wake you if needed. Tonight, at least." The boy lay back against the broad chest again, cinching the wiry arms tighter around him like a protective garment.

_Yes, here's hoping..._

But such hopes are wishful thinking at best. Alienists** refer to this as 'magical thinking,' the belief that saying something will help bring it into being, that if we concentrate on a thing hard enough, concentrate just so, it will become reality. Magical thinking has little effect on the real world other than to make us ill prepared for dealing with reality.

Once asleep, the boy relaxed completely in his companion's arms, giving himself over to the world of his dreams. The dreams came but they were neither sweet nor soothing.

_Ciel's heart was banging against his ribs so hard he could see his own shirt front trembling with it. He was __there__ again. There. In that room, amongst those monsters, without hope. Again. No Sebastian to the rescue this time, no god to hear his prayers. Perhaps because it was death he was praying for?_ _In the centre of the room, the object of his terror, the focus of horror: a stone table resembling an altar. _

_Something was on it but— _

_He daren't look, dare not allow his eyes to linger lest he trigger the worst version of the nightmare. All versions revolved around the same theme: Ciel as a sacrifice to call up the demon. But some versions were definitely worse than others._

_The human demons were there. The human demons were always there. Mostly they kept to the shadows, only their taunting voices heard calling him 'slut' and 'whore' and 'dolly' and worse, but the hands could come too, and the faces and other...body parts as well._

_He knew his best move was to run, run __now,__ before they all converged, or before the blood started, the blood and the shrieks, the blood spilling down, or worst of all, the blood that flew up and over, flying limbs, parted from their owners, spraying bright red arcs of gore that rained down on everything and everyone._

_Run now, before the demon appeared._

_Yet he stopped dead in his tracks. Dead in his tracks before even beginning to run. This was very, very bad. Usually he at least got to run away. He knew if he ran, the room would stretch out and out interminably and he would run and keep running what seemed like forever while the voices cataloged his sins and described his guilt, a tiny Sisyphus, forever navigating his level mountain, pushing his guilt before him, only to be compelled to return to do it again the next night—the next nightmare._

_But not this time._

_No, not this time because he'd stopped. Because behind him, behind him he'd heard a sound. A new sound. Behind him, a chilling gurgle and a ripping. And the terrible ripping sound...came with a snap and a near voiceless keening and the sound of something that was..._

_This was new, new and horrifying, not a part of the old dream, new and coming from atop the stone table. The stone table he'd died upon. The table he'd die on again, now, tonight, if he didn't get his legs moving but too late, too late, far too late. Another chilling rip and a mad-sounding giggle of purest evil...and the sound of something...the sound of something eating._

_He turned, knowing he ought not, helpless to do otherwise._

_ It was himself, his own dead body, lying there on the table. This was not a matter of surprise, it was expected. It was always his body lying there in the dream, lying slaughtered and offered up to the demon, a great red rent in his flesh right over his heart. That the chest cavity would be ripped open and gutted like a carcass in an abattoir was not expected, nor blood everywhere or guts and organs to be strung out like ravelled yarn, spilling over the edge of the altar in rude red and glistening purple festoons. It was both new and nauseating. _

_And there was something perched there, something perched atop the body, and that too was new, new and obscure, the detail hidden in a living, roiling darkness, something clutching the remains, hands tipped in birdlike talons, seething, wing-like shadow stretching out and over, mantling the catch, a predator stooped upon its prey, a bird with a bloodied beak—no, a man with a bloodied mouth and unnatural darkness clouding all, rendering indistinct the twisted, not-quite- human form, the air alive with swirling down feathers. _

_Then, the true heart of the horror revealed itself: the head swiveled slowly round, the face turned to him and he saw, the form still obscure but the face all too painfully clear, his ultimate, personal horror: the bird-like, beclouded, bête noir was the demon— his demon, his own bound and faithful trusted creature whom he'd named after a beloved pet. It was he who was rending his flesh and supping the gore._

_With a mad grin worthy of a retired reaper firmly fixed to his face. _

_"N-no...Sebas— no," Ciel moaned, struck down by the horror, the betrayal._

_The demon's claws dug deep into the small, torn body, kneading like a cat. It was feasting on internal organs and grinning with a wicked, red-daubed smirk—_

_..and looking right into his eyes._

_Recognition lit up its face and the grin turned into a full-on smile. Black tipped claws ripped and tore, raking at the inside of the body, his—Ciel's— body. Sabre-like teeth glittered in the torchlight, pearlescent and red-stained as they gnashed the choicest bits of its prize, peeling loose a strip with its fearsome teeth. Another ripping sound, a mighty jerk and the heart tore free and was held aloft like a trophy. Long ropes of artery and vein ripped free along with it. Gore splattered the stone floor, a bit of tattered lung trailing in the filth._

_It paused._

_The demon paused. The clouded, constantly morphing body ceased its writhing contortions and grew still, peering at him. It's head tilted slowly to one side as though with curiosity or the dawning of a tantalizing idea. A gore-dipped finger came up to curl over the tip of the chin in a gesture so 'Sebastian' the boy's heart and mind broke together, leaving shattered pieces everywhere._

_The demon's eyes crinkled in high humour at the boy's reaction. They flashed with a sudden bright glimmer of hellfire and then, then the beautifully sinuous body, suddenly coming clearly into view sheathed in supple, gleaming leather dark as night, dark as its treacherous nature, began moving. _

_Muscles bulged and flexed, the body rocked forward. Taut thigh lifted an impossibly long leg, shapely knee, tight-bunched calf, graceful ankle. Stepping down –feline, almost daintily- from the corpse, then from the table, the gimlet-heeled boots scraped fire, ringing sharp against the stones, splashing through the pools of blood and, with its twin, bathing carelessly in gore. Never letting go with its eyes, it crept closer and slowly crouched, a stalking predator. The head tilted again in curiosity._

_"No ... Sebastian no," the boy implored desperately. "You don't want to hurt me now too, do you?" But the answer to that was all too obvious, especially looking at the demon's sharp smile. In the face of that smile, the boy felt compelled to ask, "Are ... you no longer my Sebastian?" The thing's smile went flat._

_"I was never 'Sebastian', never yours."_

_It continued to creep closer, neither heeding the boy's tears nor his increasingly hysterical noises. This terror fresh and sharp and the boy had built no defence against it. _

_Eventually, feeling hopeless and mortally tired, he fell silent and simply waited, trying to enjoy his last look at the beautiful face bringing him death. He had prayed for death after all, hadn't he. He told himself it didn't matter what was done to him once he was gone and very soon all his problems would be things he need no longer trouble about._

_It helped. A little.  
_

_ Head still tilted in that deceptively benign look of curiosity the thing grabbed the boy by the throat, jerked him to his feet, then off them and up, up, until he was eye-to-eye with the creature._

_ "Mmm...hurt you, yes," he murmured seductively._

_"Sebastian ..." No more pleas, just the name, the name the creature had denied, whispered softly, more to himself than anyone else. The boy tugged a little at the individual fingers wrapping his neck like an iron collar, but his heart was no longer in it. _

_The other arm snaked behind him and drew the boy close. He dipped his face into the boy's hair and breathed deeply."Mmm, young, succulent, full of sin—mouthwatering," he smiled, pulling back enough to be able to enjoy the horror on the child's face._

_Ciel began quivering. Tears spilled over his cheeks. "I wish you wouldn't hurt me,"_ _he choked out, touching the face before him, a face with eyes gone suddenly dark and hungry, "but that would spoil it for you, wouldn't it."_

_The demon grinned."Why shouldn't I do as I please with you?" he rumbled, his voice gone rough with excitement."You are mine, twice bought and fought for far beyond your worth, and what is Meat for but to be eaten?" _

_The boy choked, tried to say more but failed, laid his hand loosely over the one at his throat. The demon angled its claws so they dimpled the flesh over the boy's artery, then smiling happily, drove them home._

Ciel Phantomhive shot thrashing and scrambling out of his sleep with a shriek, wheezing, crying, grasping at his throat. The sudden move brought Sebastian instantly upright, but when he tried to touch the boy comfort him, discover what was the trouble, keep him from falling out of bed, the boy backed away so fast making noises like a frightened animal he nearly shot right over the side. Sebastian caught him but paid for it with a pummelling. A weak one, of course, but still unpleasant.

The butler backed off, assumed a humble position, head bent, with his hand on his heart, then asked "What is wrong Young Master? Why do you suddenly fear me touching you?"

The boy stared at him a long moment, contemplating all the warnings his subconscious kept giving him in his dreams. In the end, he flung himself across the bed, winding his arms about his dark servant and protector, his Sebastian, burying his face in the man's sleep-rumpled shirt, glad of whatever comfort there was to be had, never mind the source.

The butler sat in the bed, cloaked in the velvet dark, holding the tiny body close. He tucked the duvet about him and pet the soft hair and damp, trembling back and shoulders, trying to soothe the boy and, for the most part, succeeding.

But if Ciel could've stood apart, behind himself for just a moment and seen through the darkness the expression on his butler's face, his gleaming eyes softly illuminating the chilling smile he wore as he sat there in the dark cradling and comforting his small master, Ciel Phantomhive would've likely been unpleasantly reminded of the demon of his dream.

The one with strong opinions about meat.

* * *

A/N The inspiration for this came indirectly from a certain scene in "Built for Sin' by Paradise Avenger-though it was an idea I'd been mulling over for a while.

*Latin for 'Nightmare'.

** an early form of psychiatrist.


End file.
